Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year

Tripping Along The Ledge


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Life is not a Mongolian Restaurant

mongolian
If you should ever find yourself in a Mongolian restaurant, take a bowl and make your way to the table where the uncooked meats and vegetables are laid out. Its there somewhere, look around. Fill the bowl with whatever you want, and then pass it to the mean looking man with the long sticks. He’ll throw it on top of a clay oven and shuffle it around until it’s cooked. Then, with the deftest of touches, he’ll deposit the resulting stew into your bowl.

Now all you have to do is find yourself somewhere to sit down and you can stuff your face. Read the rest of this entry »

September 1st, 2010. 8 Comments »

And your new flatmates are…

young-ones
So you’re finally moving into a place of your own? Congratulations, first and foremost. In a world that never fails to deliver its share of letdowns and crushing disappointments, this is one rite of passage that actually lives up to the hype. Before outlining some of the comparatively minor pitfalls that may lie ahead, it is worth taking stock again of what precisely you stand to gain. Read the rest of this article here.

August 31st, 2010. 7 Comments »

This is funny

August 31st, 2010. 2 Comments »

“That’s shit. They could at least remember you as the ‘anti-war activist’ who dressed in a cat suit…”

George-Galloway-005
Read the rest of this article here.

August 31st, 2010. 4 Comments »

Where Europe Meets Asia (and some dude has parked his car…)

HHHS27 - ...some dude has parked his car.
We left Dublin (and Amsterdam) a couple of weeks ago, some old school friends and I, with a plan. Our mission was to cross the vast expanse of continental Europe to Istanbul, with railways as our only means of transportation. It was a pointless mission. It was an unoriginal mission. Hell, it wasn’t even a challenging mission in this day and age. But we refused to be cowed.

Two days ago, we crossed the shimmering Bosphorus and finally set foot on Asian soil. We were sunburnt. We weren’t all speaking to each other. And we’d actually done the final leg of the trip by airplane because of flooding in Bulgaria. But fuck it. We’d gotten crazy drunk and had a shitload of fun in about a million different countries. Read the rest of this entry »

August 30th, 2010. 9 Comments »

Sorry RTE… this is Ireland’s greatest person.

Unpublished, August 2010

rocha
Next month RTE launches its search to find Ireland’s Greatest Person. As usual when the national broadcaster adapts a successful format from abroad, the resulting mess will likely serve only to remind us of what a small and, in the wider scheme of things, insignificant nation this actually is.

The BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons list in 2002 included personages as august as Churchill, Shakespeare and Darwin. Our list runs to only forty names. But it still finds room to indulge the preposterous candidatures of Mssrs. Daniel O’Donnell, Michael O’Leary and fully three (three!) members of the Boyzone camp: Ronan, Stephen and Louis Walsh. Read the rest of this entry »

August 30th, 2010. 14 Comments »

Miscellaneous Amusing Items I Come Across #44

ban imre
Hilariously sinister political candidate whose poster I came across in Budapest. My Hungarian isn’t great, but I believe the campaign slogan reads “Vote for me… and zen I vill keel you.”

August 29th, 2010. Comment now »

This enormous woman will devour us all.

enormous girl
Screw it, I’m going to the airport anyway. I’m off on holidays. Proper holidays this time. If you hear from me between now and September, I’m a sad, sad loser. In the mean time, if you haven’t visited this site in the last few weeks, this article is probably the funniest one you missed. (But you have to read the comments too.) This one is the most freakishly popular. (Ditto.) And this one actually caused someone I know in real life to come on and tell me I’m a wanker. (Ditto.) Read the rest of this entry »

August 13th, 2010. 9 Comments »

They don’t stand on ceremony in this house? For shame.

RowanWilliamsCanterbury600
Urgh. Posting this today mainly because (a) it was requested by regular reader Gueuleton and (b) I’m about to go on holidays tomorrow and haven’t time to write anything new. I should mention that this was published quite a few years ago now and that I don’t necessarily stand over one single word of it today. Except the bits that are funny, obviously. Read the rest of this entry »

August 12th, 2010. Comment now »

Published: The Dubliner, August 2010

“Tommy might have a few days for you in the warehouse. Only if you were interested, like?”

under 10s
In my childhood bedroom, the detritus of my youth lies all around: Tintin books. Football medals. Handwritten cassette tapes of The Smiths. But I’m not here to reminisce. My mother is hovering at my shoulder. She has an agenda. She always has an agenda.

Last time I was here, there was a skip waiting outside the front door when I arrived. When I asked about it, she just shrugged. “Come in”, she said. “The dinner is on. The tea is wet. We can talk about it later.” Read the rest of this entry »

August 12th, 2010. 16 Comments »